Avenue Magazine (1970)

Lord of the Rings

This voluminous work of J.R. Tolkien, in which the story is told of how the hobbit Frodo made his difficult journey to the mountain of doom to destroy that one sinle ring, inspired Andre Lassen, a native of Amsterdam, to creating rings that cast a magic spell. A spell on the person wearing it, as well as on others. Tolkien's story takes the little and friendly hobbits, smaller than dwarves, but quite larger than lilliputians, with thick, warm, brown hair on their feet and under the leadership orf the magician Gandalf, later on called Gandalf the White, through the inhospitable areas and into the land of the dark force. The closer Frodo and his companions near their target, the mountain of doom, the stronger the dark force senses the power of the ring that Frodo carries and the more he craves it in order to control the elves, dwarves and people. The company resists many attacks: Orks, Trolls, Nazgűls and Wargs try to destroy it. Finally, Frodo succeeds in throwing the ring into the fire of doom and thus ends the reign of Sauron, the dark ruler. The artist chose chose the figures that appealed to him as his imagery. Cast in Silver, it's owner becomes a 'Lord of the Rings'.

Smaug: The two rings with the images of dragons stem from the horrible dragon Smaug, the evil king of the mountain. The flying dragon depicts Smaug. In it's one claw it holds the scepter of the true king of the mountain, in the other a palentir, a glass ball that reveals the future to anyone strong enough to resist its radiating enchantment. The standing dragon is one of Smaugs forefathers: One of the oldes dragons, that lived even before ther was a third area on the middle-earth. Tolkien gives no further description of him, the artist further constructed him to his own fantasy and his kinship with the Smaug. The depiction of Smaug reminds of the moment he tries to destroy the lake city Esgaroth. Fire flies from his claws. Then he dives down in his anger, without turning his scales away from his enemies.

The Swan Ship: The image of the swan (page 87), with a house between it's wings is inspired by the story of the Swan in the elf land Lothlorien, where the company travelled through. It's beak shined like a diamond in yellow stones, the enormous wings raised. Suddenly they saw it was a ship in the form of a bird.

The Hand of a Healer: Who wears the ring to which the hand is connected, carries the hand of the healer. It is the hand of Aragorn, who travelled with the company after Gandalf had been dragged into the depth by the Balrog and subsequently took charge. The hobbits knew him by the name of wanderer. After the kingdom Gondor had been ruled by viceroys, he would come to claim his throne and rule. And did not Loreth, the wise woman in Gondor say: "The hands of a king are the hands of a healer". The scepter of Annuminas; The foremost sign of royal dignity in Numenor was the scepter and this was also the case in Arnor. The scepter of Annuminas was a silver mace and possibly the oldest handwork that remained from the Middle earth. It was already 5000 years old when Elrond gave it to Aragorn as sign of his royal dignity. Althoy the viceroys of Gondor always resisted the rumor that a king would someday claim the throne, they never took seat in it. When Aragorn took over the Kingdom, he made Lomer the viceroy. He was a son of the previous viceroy Denethor, who of grief over the loss of his son Boromir, took the life of one of his travelling companions.

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